Capuchins and Chimps and Polar Bears... Oh My!

Our family trip to the zoo couldn't have been on a more perfect Saturday. The ocean air was cool and clean by the San Francisco Zoo. For many of the children, it was their first visit to the San Francisco Zoo. From the outset, they ogled and cooed at the Zebras and Giraffes. While looking at the Chimpanzees, we couldn't miss the fact that they were so like humans. Children and mothers alike pointed out the Chimps' prerogative to bask in the sun. The one chimp that had taken enough sun in, was lying under the rafters cuddled in a blanket; many of the girls told us that he was just like their father! We were awed and impressed by how big the grizzly bears were. We were fortunate enough to view them practically nose to nose (through a thick pane of glass, of course).

When we visited the tropical house, we had to search for water turtles as they were so well-camouflaged. We did not, however, have to search for the giant anaconda they house there. The anaconda was 18 feet long and as thick as the children's waists. He (or she) was quite terrifying, especially since he was pressed against the aquarium window.

Over all, after seeing creatures like koalas, pelicans, polar bears, flamingos, and monkeys, everybody got a good sense of how diverse animals on this planet are.

Pumpkin Patch

This October ChildReach was off with the families of Raphael House for our annual visit to the Arata Farms pumpkin patch in Half Moon Bay.  This was great opportunity for families to spend time together celebrating the fall season.  There was a hay maze, train ride, haunted house, petting zoo and of course lots and lots of pumpkins. 

Everyone had a wonderful time playing, laughing and most of all taking time to relax and enjoy each other and the season.  We are all looking forward to this time next year when we can get together again and celebrate the fall.

Slide Ranch

This weekend, the ChildReach team visited Slide Ranch, a small educational farm near Muir Beach, in Marin County. We started the day exploring the grounds, upon which we noticed many small, crooked houses. They were all two stories, and about half the size of the houses we normally see. These are the homes of the farm's caretakers. Slide Ranch offers year-long internships to adults who wish to experience life on a small farm and are interested in becoming environmental educators. Two of these interns, Abalone Ashley, and Salamander Sam were our guides for the day. With them, we were able to meet goats, catch chickens, and make cheese! We learned the rules of Slide Ranch are 1) Get Dirty! 2) Try Something New! 3) Have FUN!

We split into two groups and named our teams, The Wildlife Kids and the Ranch Kids, and took names for ourselves like Black Cat Naema, Sunflower Selena, and Great Dane Diamond!

When visiting the goats we learned that Slide Ranch owns two or three of the many species of goats in existence. We were able to pet both black and white sheep, whose fur was fluffy and thick compared with the coarse fur of the goats. Salamander Sam taught us that the taste of goat milk can change depending on whether or not they live near a male goat. The goats at Slide Ranch do not live in the same pen as their male companion, Gobi, and so their milk is sweet and mild tasting.

After petting the goats we took turns milking one! The goats get milked twice a day, and produce a few pounds of milk during each milking. When Sam and Ashley milked her, they squirted milk straight from the goat's udder into our mouths. Most children thought this was strange at first, but in the end agreed that the milk was delicious. For many of us, we had abided by rule 2 of Slide Ranch, and tried something new.

We met the Ranch's chickens who were all from different species. We saw freshly laid eggs that were all sorts of sizes and colors, from brown, to beige, even blue! They were nothing like the eggs you find in stores. They had been laid so recently they were still warm and we could still here the egg-laying song chickens sing just before they are ready to lay an egg (that's right, an egg-laying song). Whether, they sang "Hey Hey, get out of my way" or "I beg, i beg, for you to take my egg! my egg!" we were not sure. We were just happy to hear it.

The cheese was quite easy to make, surprisingly. We warmed milk, let it simmer, added apple cider vinegar, and ran it through a cheese cloth after the milk had curdled and the curds had separated from the whey. We even added some fresh herbs, lemon balm and lavender, from the Slide Ranch garden, to our cheese. While this process was happening, we swapped stories of science experiments we had all done in school. Every child was engaged and had a story to offer. The one that stuck out in my mind, was the boiled egg in a bottle experiment, in which you create a vacuum in a class bottle, place a boiled egg on the opening, and in a matter of seconds, it will get sucked into the bottle, and be stuck!

We ended our day eating our cheese, along with fresh kale, chard, spinach, and blossoms in the garden. Our lavender-lemon cheese was DELICIOUS! When asked about their favorite and most interesting part of the day, the Raphael House group, without prompting, spoke about making food from scratch, understanding how much hard work is put into getting food from farms to our tables, and how grateful they are to have the sun and the earth and the plants work so hard to bring us food as well. The group of children that joined us at Slide Ranch is a bright and intelligent group that already had ideas about the importance of food and where food comes from. Their visit to Slide Ranch merely solidified their ideas, and made them appreciate the idea of farms, and animal raising even more.

Harvest Festival 2010!

Raphael House's 2010 Annual Harvest Festival was a great success. More than fifty families came to join in the fun; people from all walks of life came, including Spider Man, princesses, fairies, and even giant bananas!

This year's festival was an attack on the senses. The ghoulish entryway led to a scrumptious feast of tea sandwiches, cupcakes, and cauldron of liquid luck! (aka lemonade). Whoever dared to travel onward, encountered a friendly popcorn dealing gnome before entering the games area, where the real treats were.

Around the room were various games to enjoy with the family, including Ned's Head for the little ones, which is a game that helps develop sensory skills. Children dipped their hands into the Ned's GIANT head to find things like a giant ant, a used cotton bud, an alien, and more!!! (all fake of course).

Our next game, pin the heart on the skeleton, had children practicing their surgical skills while blindfolded. The next games developed children's imaginations by having them dip their hands into buckets of oily boiled eggs for eyeballs, jumbled jell-o for BRAINS, and spaghetti for WORMS!!!!

Our photo booth, which magically transformed kids and adults into a friendly witch and vampire for pictures, was a nice respite from all of the gross out games. The bag toss, also a nice break from the sensory games, was a great hit and had every child who played it kept coming back for more. We ended the evening with a visit from Mother Goose, and a rendition of many of her well-known nursery rhymes.

Thanks to our wonderful volunteers, this event ran smoothly and was a ton of fun. Until next year....

St George and The Dragon

        Recently, the families of Raphael House were able to join together for a fun-filled evening of story telling and treats. Sept 29^th marks the celebration of St. George’s defeat of the dragon, and, as is tradition at Raphael House, we put on a play to tell the story. The families were able to sit back and relax while the Live-in Community donned medieval costumes and acted out the narration.

The story follows a king whose village is being tormented by a dragon, with no relief in site. After leaving his daughter, the princess, tied to a tree as a sacrifice, the king flees back to the village. While she awaits her fate, the valiant St. George appears to free the princess and defeat the dragon.

After fighting the dragon back to its cave, St. George tames the dragon and frees the village from its evil grasp.  The short play, while fun and exciting, carries an uplifting moral: with God’s help, we all have the ability to conquer the inner dragons that weigh us down.

Following the show, smiling faces surrounded the dragon which led to photo ops and the kids trying out the costume themselves.  The families were able to unwind later with desserts they had prepared the previous week as the children colored pictures of their favorite parts of the story. It was an enjoyable night for both the families and staff.

Jelly Beans For Me Please

This weekend the ChildReach team was off to the Jelly Belly Factory in Vallejo and we had a pretty SWEET day.  The Jelly Belly Factory is a real, working factory and the tour led us through the whole place.  We saw from above all the equipment that is used to produce each little delicious jelly bean. 

We learned the history of Jelly Belly, and even how Ronald Regan loved jelly beans, and used to pass them around during meetings when he was California Governor.  He loved jelly belly so much that is was forever remembered in his very own jelly bean portrait.  

We had a great afternoon learning about how jelly beans are made.  Did you know that there are four stages to the process, and that each jelly bean is polished and stamps before leaving the factory?  The tour was a fun way to see a real factory at work.   There were conveyor belts, machines and even robots, who danced for us!  But the best part of course was the jelly beans.  The sample bar after the tour was filled with every flavor jelly bean.  Even some truly gross flavors like pencil shavings and skunk.  Ewww... 

We had a great time at the Jelly Belly Factory and look forward to our next visit!!

Winchester Mystery House

This October, a trip mysterious Winchester Mystery House was just the right way to kick off the month.  The house is a great piece of Bay Area history and the kids got the unique opportunity to learn not just about Mrs. Winchester and her house, but also how the area has been changed by historical events such as the 1906 Earthquake.

The story goes, that Sarah Winchester, after the deaths of both her young daughter and husband, consulted a psychic who told her to move out West, buy a house and build on it, but never finish.  The psychic explained the reason her family had died was the spirits of all the people ever killed with the Winchester Rifle were punishing her.  So Winchester moved out to San Jose, California and turned an 8 room farmhouse into a 160 room mansion that is now visited by thousands of visitors every year.  The house comes with stairs that lead down to go up, doors that lead to walls, and even a door that leads to nowhere.

  Our group got to see the house, which was remodeled over 600 times while Mrs. Winchester was alive, along with the behind the scenes places like the stables, agricultural buildings, and even the basement.  What a treat to see how such an eccentric person lived and the piece of history she created.

And what Raphael House field trip is complete without a picnic lunch? And perhaps a little swing competition...

For three Saturdays beginning September 18 through October 2nd, Raphael House is hosting a series of KidPower Workshops for parents and children.  KidPower is a program designed to help children and parents with the challenges they face in their daily lives. 

"Children face challenging situations every day at home, at school, online, and in their communities. Sometimes, adults are aware of these issues. Often, they are not. Kidpower teaches children positive, practical, and effective ways to think, move, and speak to stay safe in challenging personal safety situations. Working with children and trying to see the world through their eyes informs everything we do." -KidPower

In our first meeting parents were able to see hands-on how to handle areas of concern such as setting boundaries, bullying, fighting, and personal safety.  It was a great opportunity for parents to set aside time to focus on better preparing themselves and their children for many of life's most challenging moments and everyone appreciated the chance to talk about their feelings, and get positive feedback on how to address them. 

We are very much looking forward to this weekend's workshop where children will be invited to join their parents in learning these important safety and awareness skills. 

Our upcoming workshop schedule is as follows:  (Please call Stephanie or Preeti to register)
Saturday, September 25th 10:30-12:30pm at Raphael House
Saturday, October 2nd 2:00-4:00pm at Raphael House - This workshop will also be offered in Spanish

Tumbling Toddlers

This weekend ChildReach spent an afternoon at Acrosports, a children's gym in San Francisco.  The gym is filled with trampolines, balance beams, spongy mats and padded walls, for children to bounce, run, and play to their hearts' content. Even parents joined in the fun!

Coach Jerrell helped us flip on beams, played jumbo basketball, and then tried to teach us a few break-dancing moves. I'm afraid it might take a few more visits to Acrosports to master those.

This trip was a great way for the kids and parents to have some quality time together and work on developing those ever important motor  and muscle skills.  Getting the opportunity to use their bodies and test their physical boundaries, and perhaps even their fears, was a wonderful challenge for both kids and parent to have the chance to overcome.  By getting kids involved in physical activities at such a young age, we are hoping that the kids will grow up healthy and strong with a greater passion for physical health and fitness.

Over all, it was a nice, relaxing Saturday afternoon for parents and children alike, and we're definitely looking forward to our next visit!

This Weekend, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

... The ChildReach gang jetted to Zeum, a children's museum in the heart of San Francisco, for their annual Clone Wars Weekend. We wasted no time in stepping into our new roles as Jedi, Stormtroopers, and Galactic princesses. Within minutes of being in the museum, we had donned Clone Wars outfits, had written scripts for our first movies, and before an hour was up had starred in movie about space invaders, Darths and Siths. I'm certain that if the movies had been longer than two minutes, they would have been blockbusters!

After our stab at being the next George Lucas, we moved on to design claymation puppets. Unfortunately, with only 5 minutes until our Lightsaber training course, we had little time to make a movie with them and left our characters for other people to use. We had no intention of being late and feeling the wrath of Obi-Wab Kanobi!

Yes, that's right, the one and only Obi-Wan taught our ChildReach crew how to wield a lightsaber, and use the Force for good.

We worked up quite an appetite while swinging, slicing, and slashing our lightsabers,so we decided to head back to Earth for a picnic on the roof of Raphael House. We were all glad end our day safe from the troubles of the Galaxy!

Labor Day at the Bay... Aquarium

The ChildReach crew spent this Labor Day learning about the San Francisco Bay Area's aquatic life at the Aquarium of the Bay at San Francisco's Fisherman's Warf.  We saw Jelly Fish, schools of local fish, and of course... SHARKS. 

The Sharks were the kid's favorite by far.  But,the sharks did get a lot of competititon from the stingrays whose slippery, slimy backs we got to touch as they swam by.


There were also tide pools with Star Fish and Sea Cucumbers all of which both kids and parents got to touch and explore.  There were also many displays teaching the children, and the adults about the importance of conservation and the impact of trash.  Yep, trash.  Did you know that a plastic bottle in the ocean takes 406 years to decompose?

After everyone had had their fill of the exhibits, we headed outside to enjoy the sunshine and a nice picnic lunch.  The parents enjoyed being able to eat sandwiches they didn't have to make, and to watch their kids climb and play out on the beautiful SF Embarcadero. 

This trip was a great day for the families to get out together and for the kids to see the local sea life that surrounds them in the Bay Area.  We enjoyed watching how educational and theraputic it was for the entire family and we're looking forward to our next environmental education adventure!

City Kids on the Farm...

Last weekend we celebrated our last field trip of the 2010 summer season with a trip to Emma Prusch Farms in San Jose.  The farm was a wonderful opportunity for the children to experience environmental education up close and personal.  They had the chance to pet and feed animals, including pigs, cows and chickens, as well as pick fresh organic vegetables.  We started the day with our docent Dennis learning about the differences between Roosters and Hens and what exactly a minature pig is. 

The kids got to feed the pigs fresh cucumbers and watermelon and the goats got some fresh grain, which they gladly ate right out of the kids' hands.





After feeding and petting the animals it was time to explore the world of organic gardening.  Each child was a given a bag to fill with fresh veggies to take home to their families.  The kids remarked how excited they were to be able to share such special treats, and we talked about what fun dishes they could cook with squash, tomatoes, carrots and peppers... 

The farm tour was a lot of fun, but it wasn't over yet.  After the tour we all had the chance to soak up the sun while we ate our lunches and played at the farm's park.  There was a play structure and plenty of green grass to run and play on.  It was the perfect end to a super fun day!